Other than training camp, when would this be appealing? I suppose they could have rooms that are geared toward traveling media and they could house players that come in for visits, but I'd assume most people using it would have business at the facility.

There are a number of other large corps down in that area. Thompson Reuters is one example. They are hoping that they will stay as close a possible. I think they are also hoping some of the amenities built in (auditorium, etc) will be used by these corps too.

I think they are hoping that the stadium will be used for MSHSL games and could have out of towners stay right there.

lastly, remember they plan to eventually build out 10 (?) apartment buildings adding thousands of residents, plus retail, office, etc. They hope all of these uses lead to a HUGE mixed use area that has everything you could ever need.

The Rand Tower hotel conversion was presented to the DMNA LUC tonight. Only new item was that they're going to build a rooftop bar on top of the four-story annex section between the tower itself and CP Plaza.

The owner of Rand Tower, a historic Art Deco office building in downtown Minneapolis, is transforming it into a Tribute by Marriott hotel.

Maven Real Estate Partners plans to spend more than $86 million to convert the building at 527 S. Marquette Av. from office space into a 277-room hotel, said Nick Peterson, co-founder and principal of Maven.

The owner of Rand Tower, a historic Art Deco office building in downtown Minneapolis, is transforming it into a Tribute by Marriott hotel.

Maven Real Estate Partners plans to spend more than $86 million to convert the building at 527 S. Marquette Av. from office space into a 277-room hotel, said Nick Peterson, co-founder and principal of Maven.

I like it until the part there 6th street bike lanes are gonna have to deal with more hotel valet dropoff crossing over and of course double parking during busy times. Besides that I wonder if all these hotels can keep making enough given our winter season occupancy levels are rock bottom awful. It's just a waiting game to see which older hotel is the first to jump ship. Unless we truly can support all these new hotels. Seems odd to me were such a growing tourist destination now. Maybe global warming makes our winter wonderland much more wonderful to outsiders?

I've been working at the Hewing hotel now almost 3 years since it opened. We have a surprising number of tourists. At least 3/4 of our business is tourism and wedding groups... y'all weddings occupy a lot of hotel rooms in this city. We also don't really slow down that much in the winter. Granted we're a boutique hotel so that probably skews it but we even get a lot of tourist from other hotels coming to ours to dine and drink, so many people from the 5 state area.

There were 33.3 million visitors in 2017 to the Twin Cities metro. Of those, 24.2 million were "leisure" travelers. That's about 73%.

I didn't see 2018 numbers in a quick search, but I'm sure those are even higher given the Super Bowl.

The girls in town for a bachelorette party from Mankato--tourists. The family in town from Iowa for their cousin's wedding at Nicollet Island--tourists. We might not have planeloads of Chinese tourists arriving daily, but tourism looks pretty strong and growing.

*Edit: My bad, a visitor is counted as someone who traveled 100 miles or more, so Mankato doesn't even count. Replace that with Moorhead

A recent visit to the Twin Cities Outlet Mall in Eagan was like a walk through the international terminal at Schipol In Amsterdam. I heard as many different languages in a 45 minute walk around the mall as I have walking through the crazy busy terminal in Amsterdam. I am not surprised at the visitor numbers for the Twin Cities. Friends visiting here from Europe are always happily surprised by what they find here - and sometimes they manage to find things that are surprising to my more jaded self.